MICROSTORY OF ART

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM

Dedicated to Confirmation Bias

(Picture: Zhang Lu; painting of Liezi or Lie Yukou)

The Story of the Lost Axe

(24.3.2023) It is funny, but also telling and a little bit sad that the history of the notion of confimation bias is itself an example of confirmation bias. It was a new name given, in the 1960s (as it seems), to a cluster of ideas which was already known in Daoist circles of the 5th or 4th century BC. As is evident from reading the story of the lost axe (the axe thief), which we encounter in the book Liezi (or other texts, as we can see here). Exact philology is not our goal here – what we we would like to is simply to look at little bit at that story.

One) The Suspicion (a hypothesis)

A man suspected that the son of his neighbor had stolen his axe. The man had a suspicion, but instead of suspicion we may also say: a hypothesis, an idea. And this hypothesis, this idea, the man now began to investigate, to test. By observing the son of his neighbor.

Two) Interpreting Everything in the Light of a Hypothesis

Modern psychologist might now wonder why the man began to see everything in the light of his hypothesis, although, actually, the man seemed not to be sure, because otherwise there would not have been a need for testing, investigating. But it seemed now to the man that the way the son of his neighbor walked and talked and behaved was perfect evidence that the son of his neighbor was actually the axe thief. Everything seemed to confirm that hypothesis, and everything else the man (obviously) repressed to see. Perhaps, as we may add, because he wanted to be right, since he already believed to know that the son of his neighbor was the axe thief. The wish to be right might be the hidden motive behind wishful thinking. Or he simply and desperately hoped to find the axe thief, not because he wanted to be right in the first place, but because he needed someone to blame for his loss.

Three) Being Confronted with the Actual Truth (lessons)

But suddenly the man found his axe again in his own garden. With the result that the way the son of his neighbor walked and talked and behaved (in some variations also: laughed) was not perfect evidence anymore that the son of his neighbor was the axe thief. The hypothesis, suddenly, was falsified. Everything had been a projection, the result of wishful thinking. The seeming reality, the seeming solution of a problem had been a construction of the mind, which had forgot (or suppressed) to think of alternative hypotheses, of other solutions to the problem, and above all: all evidence that may have pointed to confirming other hypotheses, and in the end the hypothesis that did stand testing: the axe had not been stolen at all.

This story (or parable) can also be applied to modern problems. To problems of connoisseurship for example. We may ask for hidden motives, about which the tale actually says nothing. And we may observe how, instead of testing alternative hypotheses, people are inclined to see everything in the light of a certain hypothesis they want to be true: instead of axe-thief, instead of son of a neighbor, we may say: the painter whom people, who have a picture, want to be responsible for a picture, want to be the author of their picture. And the name of confirmation bias is just the name given to a concept which describes phenomena that Daoist texts did describe as well, in other ways, but very telling ways. In the 5th or 4th century BC. And without, as it seems, modern psychology taking into account that confirmation bias was just a new name for ideas that, actually, were not new at all. But the hypothesis that Daoist sages already knew what modern psychologist just had described, was, as it seems, not taken into account. Or suppressed. Which illustrates confirmation bias itself perfectly.

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM
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